Wolves have occupied the shadows of land and lore for thousands of years, and the battle over whether to hunt them or protect them has come to light in their few modern American habitats. Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Minnesota have become legal and political battlegrounds between advocates and adversaries of gray wolves. Many ranchers and hunters consider the wolf a blight upon livestock and game, and see wolf hunting as a solution. The environmentalists and the socially concerned who oppose this approach see the wolf as a natural, historical, and spiritual treasure. Wolves help shape our culture, balance the natural environment, and they can contribute directly and indirectly to the economy. Wolves have been successfully reintroduced to a few areas within the United States, but with their range and number still greatly diminished, allowing them to be hunted could erase them from all but memory. The United States gray wolf is beneficial to the environment, the economy, and the American psyche, so its small population should be protected rather than hunted.

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The July 13 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association includes an opinion piece titled “State intervention in Life-Threatening Childhood Obesity,” by Dr. David Ludwig and Lindsey Murtagh. Dr. Ludwig, Harvard Associate Professor of Pediatrics, is a director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital, Boston. Lindsey Murtagh is a research associate for Harvard’s Department of Health Policy and Management.

The article makes the case that the government should intervene when children are very obese, and that some of these children should be placed in foster care. Mild to moderate childhood obesity, referred to as poor parenting, is compared to secondhand smoke in the household, where damage can often be lessened when a child reaches adulthood. Since secondhand smoke can lead to cancer and heart failure, as well as to life-threatening respiratory problems even before adulthood, I think they should have at least thrown morbid obesity into that category as well. We don’t remove children from their homes if their parents smoke. Instead, we educate the public on the dangers of smoking, including the dangers of secondhand smoke to children and the unborn. We require warning labels on cigarettes. We put anti-smoking public service ads on TV, radio and billboards. And to a great extent, it’s working. It has taken time, but not the separation of children from their parents.

Removing a child from a home, as the article recommends, when the only solutions to severe obesity-related health problems are bariatric surgery or foster care seems like a sound idea at first glance. But if a child’s health has deteriorated to the point that bariatric surgery must be performed immediately, the potential over-time effectiveness of foster care wouldn’t compare. Removing the child from the home would not fix the immediate, urgent health problem(s). In fact, it could make them worse by placing emotional stress on the child.

Then there is the obvious, that being torn from their families and thrown into a cold, generic system and into foster care won’t set obese children up emotionally to go along with lifestyle changes.

In addressing possible genetic causes of obesity and false accusations against parents, the authors make the comparison to a particular genetic cause of bone fractures. They claim that though the discovery of osteogenesis imperfecta opens the door to new ways to cope, discoveries of genetic causes of obesity do not do the same. This seems like an arbitrary claim, unless they have a crystal ball at Harvard. If a parent is given the knowledge that his child has a medical condition or a genetic deficiency, it may give him more defined or effective steps to take. Parents’ minds aren’t created with cookie cutters, and when children also aren’t, it shouldn’t be a reason for the government to break up families.

Our tax dollars are already spread too thin. We can’t afford for the government to invite themselves to our dinner tables and cart our children off to foster care. If we had money to burn, it would be better spent on eliminating causes, outside the home, of our obesity epidemic. Even without a fresh round of taxes there are things we could do.

The school lunch room is a huge contributor to childhood obesity. At least one of our local schools claims to serve healthy, fresh foods, yet what hits students’ trays is preformed meat substance patties or hot dogs, frozen pizza, syruppy canned vegetables, processed cheese, and the much bragged-on sweet potato fries that are cooked in a vat of grease and even fattier than regular fries. Juice costs a dollar or two extra, and isn’t real juice. Any fresh fruit is limited to about three bites worth per student. The school allows soda machines to be placed in the lunch room, though they shouldn’t be allowed on the grounds. And the government will do a better job feeding children than their parents?! Schools should stop relying on “food” services that provide slop. It may be financially comparable for them to use their own in-house staff and real, healthful food.

Eating habits are generally proportionate to income. Healthier foods can be more expensive than Cheese Puffs and Fun Dogs, especially if purchased blindly. We already offer food stamps to those who qualify. Why don’t we ban their use for Fun Dogs and soda, and enable and promote their use at more farmer’s markets? Many who rely on food stamps could also benefit from learning how to read labels and to better plan so that single ingredients can be bought in greater amounts and used for several meals.

When dealing with childhood obesity, foster care would be to family what soda is to water. A child’s ability to navigate food choices and daily activities is shaped at home, as it should continue to be. But parents nowadays are letting their kids down. A string of tragedies with the same cause tends to wake society up and bring about change. What a deep sleep we are in this time!

According to a Pioneer Press article (their site may not redirect properly), Doug Edge of North St. Paul is facing a possible fine and jail time for having local feral cats sterilized and vaccinated. He has been charged with two misdemeanors for “letting an animal run at large.” According to the city, the fact that Edge puts food out for the cats as well as traps them to take them in for sterilization and immunizations before releasing them means that he owns them.

I wonder if the city has tallied what the cost to them would run if Mr. Edge called their animal control officer to remove each feline as it came onto his property? He is obviously doing a job they are failing at. The average animal control officer’s wage, taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, is $14.57 per hour. Edge is working for free. Maybe he should send them a bill.

From the Humane Society’s website, the average cost of caring for and housing one animal can be $900. The Humane Society is not run on tax money, but does receive payment from the city for services and impound housing. Another cost that they are spared by Doug Edge, first, because he so kindly takes care of some of the immediate needs of these cats, like food and disease prevention, rather than call and complain, and second, by preventing them from having more litters of feral cats that would have the same basic needs.

Feral cats are not pets, and generally cannot be conditioned to trust enough to become pets. They are wild. The reason there are so many? Human stupidity and cruelty. And even more human stupidity is being shown by the City of North St. Paul. They have leveled charges at a man for being compassionate and for helping his community, and judging from the Pioneer Press article, they had to really twist the meaning of a law that exists for other reasons to do so.

Many thanks to Doug and Annette Edge. I hope they continue to fight this. In case you are wondering, the program they work through to help the cats is Animal Ark.

In a stunning display of first grade coping skills, Dayton has asked commissioners to skip an upcoming budget panel meeting. With a looming government shutdown in Minnesota, what we need is a governor who can roll up his sleeves and work hard alongside others to come to an agreement on a realistic budget plan. What we have is one who can’t work with others without a mediator because they might shatter his belief in a money tree.

Though I’d rather see a government shutdown than a budget that sends us dog paddling into ever deeper waters, ideally Dayton will make at least a brief visit to reality before that happens.

Americans first. That’s how the US President should prioritize. Instead, ours continues to bow to others at the expense of Americans. This time, being sensitive to the needs of Americans falls behind being sensitive to the wishes of Osama bin Laden and his supporters. Now that that monster, the one behind so much pain and destruction to the US, is purportedly dead, the feelings of his followers are being handled with kid gloves while Americans are once again being told, “Just trust me.”

Obama refuses to produce photographic evidence that bin Laden is dead. Why? One reason given is that he doesn’t want to incite violence against our troups. Really? He expects us to believe that killing their leader won’t rile terrorists up, but showing proof of it would? He says that it would be morally wrong to upset bin Ladens followers by showing such proof. Was the killing of American children and men and women morally wrong? And who elected Obama our parent? I think we can individually make our own moral choices, and our own decisions on whether or not to view such a photo.

Americans need to believe that bin Laden is gone. We don’t need to hear another round of “Trust me.” We need the President to have earned our trust to begin with, and then to keep it by not being shifty when we require proof of such an important claim.

Something smells rotten, and I wish Obama would help clear the air.

“Happy early Mother’s Day- get yourself a shotgun!” is what hubby said today. And so I will. We’ll be putting the down payment on it this evening. This brings back memories of Mother’s Day gifts of routers, drills and other woodworking goodies.

We’ve had many discussions on the why’s and why not’s of owning a gun. The main reason why not is tots and kids running around. This becomes a non-issue when considering that it would be beyond stupid to leave a gun laying around where a child could get to it in the first place. It is even more of a non-issue for us, since no small children are living here. And if they were, in these times, I’d feel better knowing I could protect them should someone break into our home.

That’s one of the why’s. Home defense. Waiting for law enforcement to arrive doesn’t sound like a good option for a person whose home has been broken into and who is then in the house with a potential attacker. Another why is hunting. The bird on the dining table would be better all around if it were put there by one of the diners.

We made our decision just before a couple of related topics were brought to my attention.

My brother-in-law shared this link to an excellent article that demonstrates well how people become serfs. That process was started quite some time ago even here in the US. And this article about our government representatives fighting to make it so that those on its secretive terrorist watch list cannot purchase guns shows a further slide towards serfdom.

US citizens are added to the terrorist watch list if they are

“known or reasonably suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism”

Now, that’s not broad at all, is it? Add in the many common names, and it’s a hot mess. One 2009 government report classifies those who perceive gun control as a threat to their right to bear arms (Duh!) as rightwing extremists, so now we are to trust the judgment of these government entities when it comes to the broad scope of who can be added to the terrorist watchlist? Citizens are not told when they are added to the list, and are not allowed to find out if they are on the list. What would justify stripping a citizen of his right to bear arms based on a widely-reaching government list that he had no access to- not even to his own personal record? Will we, as a country, accept and gladly adopt this?